Weather and Traffic

New project underway in President Trump’s Palm Beach neighborhood

Miami developer and part-time Palm Beacher Todd Michael Glaser has the town’s permission to add a new driveway and make other changes to the landscpae at landmarked Casa Vera, 125 Via Del Lago. Photo courtesy of Douglas Elliman

Posted: 10:55 a.m. Saturday, November 25, 2017

Miami developer and part-time Palm Beacher Todd Michael Glaser this month won the unanimous endorsement of the Landmarks Preservation Commission for his plan to re-do the landscaping and relocate the driveway at historic Casa Vera. The 1928 house at 125 Via del Lago stands in the heart of the area closed to traffic when President Trump visits Palm Beach.

Glaser, you might recall, early this month paid just under $11 million for the property with plans to make improvements and resell it. Last week, Glaser relisted it for sale — at $13.9 million — through agents A. Whitney McGurk and Liza Pulitzer of Brown Harris Stevens. That price will hold, McGurk said, pending the landscape and hardscape improvements, at which point the property will be relisted at a higher price. He wouldn’t say what the new price might be.

If a buyer steps up before the project is complete, Glaser would still entertain overseeing the improvements if the new owner desired, McGurk added: “There are several options.”

Carrying out Glaser’s vision, the plan by landscape designer Keith Williams of Nievera Williams Landscape Architecture would relocate the driveway entrance farther west. The change would give motorists entering the property a peek at the stately rear of the house, with its twin staircases leading down a pool deck overlooking a broad lawn.

The existing driveway would be removed and a garden area planted in its place. The project also would recreate how the home’s front entrance functioned when noted society architect Marion Sims Wyeth designed the house. At the time, there wasn’t a driveway nearby — just a simple sidewalk leading from street to the front door.

“I think the plans approved by the landmarks commission will create a more dramatic entrance to the property, which will make it a more valuable property,” McGurk said.

The project had to pass muster with the landmarks board because the exterior of the house was granted landmark protection in 2011. Glaser has told theDaily News he also plans to carry out updates to the bathrooms and the kitchen, but those projects aren’t yet in the town pipeline.

Williams said he expects no problem getting his landscape workers through the security checkpoints and onto the property while the president is in town.

Miami Beach real estate agent David Solomon of EWM Realty International acted on behalf of Glaser in the sale opposite Douglas Elliman agents Harriet Brams and Steve J. Davis, who represented the seller, a company affiliated with Clinton Group hedge-fund head George E. Hall.

Glaser also won the commission’s approval last month for a window-replacement project across town at the landmarked lakefront house he and wife Kimbought recently for $5.9 million at 1221 N. Lake Way. They bought that nautical Moderne-style house in a deal that saw McGurk and Pulitzer negotiating for the couple opposite listing agent Burt Minkoff of the Corcoran Group.

In addition to the Via del Lago sale, another house sold in the Trump-restricted area over the past few months. In early August, a six-bedroom house at 137 Woodbridge Road sold for $8.9 million in a deal brokered on both sides by Christian J. Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate.

And two vacant oceanfront lots in the 900 block of South Ocean Boulevard are under contract, according to MLS. Measuring a little less than each, they were listed by Corcoran Group agent Jim McCann as a package deal for $27 million. The town has approved a Mediterranean-style house to be built on speculation on the lot that borders Clarendon Avenue.

Popular in Business

Reader Comments
...

Next Up in Real Estate Channel

Mutual funds pioneer Charles “Chuck” M. Royce and his wife, Deborah, whose lakefront house late last year won a Ballinger Award, have sold their other Palm Beach house across town to its next-door neighbor for a recorded $8.9 million. Kenneth W. and Claudia J. Silverman bought the house at 830 S. County Road, according to the deed...

In Palm Beach, land and dreams go hand in hand. And along those lines, longtime Palm Beach homebuilder and developer Dan Swanson and his wife, Karen, have taken an unusual tack in updating their marketing for the property in Phipps Estate, where they have lived for years. With their recent re-listing of 205 Via Tortuga in the MLS, the couple has included...

Palm Beach real estate brokers are revving up for what traditionally is their busiest weekend of the year, the high point of the winter season when house hunters get driven to properties in freshly detailed Mercedes-Benzes and Range Rovers by agents eager to ink deals. And this Presidents Day weekend promises to have an actual president in town, with...

Broker Christian Angle of Christian J. Angle Real Estate has given his sales listing for a Palm Beach mega-mansion a visual update with photographs showing rooms furnished for the first time. The never-lived-in oceanfront home at 1071 N. Ocean Blvd. is for sale at $64.9 million in the Palm Beach Board of Realtors Multiple Listing...

A never-lived-in house on an ocean-to-lake estate at 900 S. Ocean Blvd. in Manalapan has sold for a recorded $24 million, about a year after a larger home built next door by the same developer changed hands for $3 million more. The buyer was a limited liability company with a New York City address associated in public records with Solil Management...